unsulliedspotlessly clean and freshAlaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives.

infallibilitythe quality of never making an errorThere was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility.

derelictin deplorable conditionA vintage International Harvester from the 1940s, the derelict vehicle is located twenty-five miles west of Healy as the raven flies, rusting incongruously in the fireweed beside the Stampede Trail, just beyond the boundary of Denali National Park.

contumaciouswillfully obstinate; stubbornly disobedientThompson, Samel, and Swanson, however, are contumacious Alaskans with a special fondness for driving motor vehicles where motor vehicles aren’t really designed to be driven.

autopsyan examination and dissection of a dead bodyThe body was taken to Anchorage, where an autopsy was performed at the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory.

estrangedcaused to be unlovedIf McCandless felt estranged from his parents and siblings, he found a surrogate family in Westerberg and his employees, most of whom lived in Westerberg's Carthage home.

encryptconvert ordinary language into codeWesterberg had been drawn into a scheme to build and sell "black boxes,” which illegally unscramble satellite-television transmissions, allowing people to watch encrypted cable programming without paying for it.

contritefeeling or expressing pain or sorrow for sins or offensesContrite, he copped a plea to a single felony count and on October 10, 1990, some two weeks after McCandless arrived in Carthage, began serving a four-month sentence in Sioux Falls.

nomadicmigratoryWith Westerberg in stir, there was no work at the grain elevator for McCandless, so on October 23, sooner than he might have under different circumstances, the boy left town and resumed a nomadic existence.

therapeutictending to cure or restore to healthHere the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.

egressthe act of coming out; becoming apparentThere was nowhere to move the car, however, as the only route of egress was now a foaming, full-blown river.

distraughtdeeply agitated especially from emotionInstead of feeling distraught over this turn of events, moreover, McCandless was exhilarated: He saw the flash flood as an opportunity to shed unnecessary baggage.

credoany system of principles or beliefsAlthough the tone of the journal—written in the third person in a stilted, self-consciousness voice—often veers toward melodrama, the available evidence indicates that McCandless did not misrepresent the facts; telling the truth was a credo he took seriously.

brackishslightly salty“He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”

unbridlednot restrained or controlledThis lower stretch of the river, from Hoover Dam to the gulf, has little in common with the unbridled torrent that explodes through the Grand Canyon, some 250 miles upstream from Topock.

hummocka small natural hillOn January 16, McCandless left the stubby metal boat on a hummock of dune grass southeast of El Golfo de Santa Clara and started walking north up the deserted beach.

unsavorymorally offensiveTo avoid being robbed by the unsavory characters who rule the streets and freeway overpasses where he slept, he learned to bury what money he had before entering a city, then recover it on the way out of town.

primordialhaving existed from the beginningThe dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew.

temperamentalsubject to sharply varying moodsDidn’t like to be around too many people, though. Temperamental. He meant good, but I think he had a lot of complexes—know what I’m saying?

turgidostentatiously lofty in styleMesmerized by London’s turgid portrayal of life in Alaska and the Yukon, McCandless read and reread The Call of the Wild, White Fang, “To Build a Fire," "An Odyssey of the North,” “The Wit of Porportuk."

enthralledfilled with wonder and delightHe was so enthralled by these tales, however, that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction, constructions of the imagination that had more to do with London’s romantic sensibilities than with the actualities of life in the subarctic wilderness.

consignmentthe delivery of goods for sale or disposalOne afternoon while McCandless was tending the book table at the Niland swap meet, somebody left a portable electric organ with Burres to sell on consignment.

calisthenicslight exercises designed to promote general fitnessHe did calisthenics each morning to get in shape for the rigors of the bush and discussed backcountry survival strategies at length with Bob, a self-styled survivalist.

anachronisticchronologically misplacedOn January 4, 1993, this writer received an unusual letter, penned in a shaky, anachronistic script that suggested an elderly author.

desiccatedthoroughly dried outAway from the lakeshore the land rises gently and then abruptly to form the desiccated, phantasmal badlands of Anza-Borrego.

nexusthe means of connection between things linked in seriesWhen he needed provisions, he would hitch or walk the four miles into town, where he bought rice and filled his plastic water jug at the market-liquor store-post office, a beige stucco building that serves as the cultural nexus of greater Salton City.

ramshacklein deplorable conditionFranz drove Alex the rest of the way, chatted with him there for a while, and then returned to town, where he lived alone, rent free, in return for managing a ramshackle apartment building.

artifacta man-made object taken as a wholeExecuted with remarkable skill and creativity, this belt is as astonishing as any artifact Chris McCandless left behind.

fulminatecriticize severelyNot infrequently during their visits, Franz recalls, McCandless’s face would darken with anger and he’d fulminate about his parents or politicians or the endemic idiocy of mainstream American life.

burgeongrow and flourishFranz relished being with McCandless, but their burgeoning friendship also reminded him how lonely he’d been.

pseudonyma fictitious name used when performing a particular roleRonald Franz (this is not his real name; at his request I have given him a pseudonym) looks remarkably sturdy for a man in his ninth decade who has survived two heart attacks.

rancidhaving a rank smell or tasteI opened the microwave, and the bottom of it was filled with rancid grease. Alex had been using it to cook chicken, and it never occurred to him that the grease had to drain somewhere.

extravagantunrestrained, especially with regard to feelingsGiven Walt’s need to exert control and Chris’s extravagantly independent nature, polarization was inevitable.

rapporta relationship of mutual understanding between peopleIn high school McCandless had enjoyed a close rapport with two or three members of the opposite sex, and Carine recalls one instance when he got drunk and tried to bring a girl up to his bedroom in the middle of the night

stridentunpleasantly loud and harshThe most strident criticism came in the form of a dense, multipage epistle from Ambler, a tiny Inupiat village on the Kobuk River north of the Arctic Circle.

hubrisoverbearing pride or presumptionMcCandless is, finally, just a pale 20th-century burlesque of London's protagonist, who freezes because he ignores advice and commits big-time hubris).

asceticismrigorous self-denial and active self-restraintMcCandless's contrived asceticism and a pseudoliterary stance compound rather than reduce the fault.

histrioniccharacteristic of acting or a stage performanceMcCandless's postcards, notes, and journals ... read like the work of an above average, somewhat histrionic high school kid

reconditedifficult to penetrateIn mid-winter a field biologist discovered all his belongings—two rifles, camping gear, a diary filled with incoherent ranting about truth and beauty and recondite ecological theory

unkemptnot neatly combedOne rainy afternoon while walking into town, I crossed paths with an unkempt, agitated man who appeared to be about forty.

forebeara person from whom you are descendedHe wondered whether humans could live as our forebears had when mammoths and saber-toothed tigers roamed the land or whether our species had moved too far from its roots to survive without gunpowder, steel, and other artifacts of civilization.

serenadesing and play for somebodyHe carried around a cheap guitar held together with masking tape and would serenade anybody who’d listen with long, off-key songs about his adventures.

incineratebecome reduced to ashesthe cabin he was staying in caught fire and burned to rubble, incinerating both his equipment and the voluminous accumulation of notes, poetry, and personal journals that he regarded as his life’s work.

circuitousdeviating from a straight courseAs if climbing the peak alone in winter weren’t challenging enough, this time he decided to up the ante even further by beginning his ascent at sea level, which entailed walking 160 hard, circuitous miles from the shore of Cook Inlet just to reach the foot of the mountain.

flamboyantmarked by ostentation but often tastelessAnd he seemed like a smart guy. But there was a side to him that was a little bit dreamy, a little bit out of touch with reality. He was flamboyant. He liked to party hard.

bravadoa swaggering show of courageHe could be extremely responsible, but he had a tendency to wing it sometimes, to act impulsively, to get by on bravado and style.

posthumouslyafter death“I think I should have used more foresight about arranging my departure,” he confessed to his diary, significant portions of which were published posthumously in a five-part story by Kris Capps in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

scavengefeed on carrion or refuseAt one point he managed to scavenge meat from a diseased caribou that had wandered into the lake and died.

bohemianunconventional in especially appearance and behaviorStella was a headstrong woman with bohemian tastes and driving artistic ambitions, for both herself and her kin; she self-published a literary journal, the Ruess Quartette, the cover of which was emblazoned with the family maxim: "Glorify the hour."

callowyoung and inexperiencedRuess was, in the words of Wallace Stegner, "a callow romantic, an adolescent esthete, an atavistic wanderer of the wastelands"

unscathednot injuredTwice I was nearly gored to death by a wild bull. But always, so far, I’ve escaped unscathed and gone forth to other adventures.

nonchalantlyin a composed and unconcerned mannerAnd in his final letter Ruess nonchalantly confesses to his brother: I have had a few narrow escapes from rattlers and crumbling cliffs.

paraphernaliaequipment consisting of miscellaneous articlesexcept for the burros and their tack, none of Ruess’s possessions—his camping paraphernalia, journals, and paintings—was ever found.

picaresque(of fiction) involving clever rogues or adventurersWhen Edward Abbey was writing The Monkey Wrench Gang, his picaresque novel about eco-terrorism in the canyon country, his pal Ken Sleight was said to have inspired the character Seldom Seen Smith.

arcanerequiring secret or mysterious knowledgeWithin the ranks of his arcane field—an advanced technology called synthetic aperture radar, or SAR—he is an eminence.

mercurialliable to sudden unpredictable changeAccording to members of the extended family, his moods can be dark and mercurial, although they say his famous temper has lost much of its volatility in recent years.

trajectorythe path followed by an object moving through spaceIt is impossible to know what murky convergence of chromosomal matter, parent-child dynamics, and alignment of the cosmos was responsible, but Christopher Johnson McCandless came into the world with unusual gifts and a will not easily deflected from its trajectory.

antisocialshunning contact with othersHe wasn’t antisocial—he always had friends, and everybody liked him—but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.

rancora feeling of deep and bitter anger and ill-willThe rancor was more smoke than fire, says Carine, but "I think it was one of the reasons Chris and I were so close. We learned to count on each other when Mom and Dad weren’t getting along.”

savvythe cognitive condition of someone who understandsThe old man’s backwoods savvy, his affinity for the wilderness, left a deep impression on the boy.

panachedistinctive and stylish eleganceIndeed, in a goofy video Chris made in college, he can be heard belting out "Summers by the sea/Sailboats in Capri” with impressive panache, crooning like a professional lounge singer.

nuancea subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitudeNuance, strategy, and anything beyond the rudimentaries of technique were wasted on Chris.

apartheida social policy of racial segregationHe spoke seriously to his friends about smuggling weapons into that country and joining the struggle to end apartheid.

demeaningcausing awareness of your shortcomingsWhen Walt and Billie suggested that he needed a college degree to attain a fulfilling career, Chris answered that careers were demeaning “twentieth-century inventions," more of a liability than an asset, and that he would do fine without one, thank you.

incorrigibleimpervious to correction by punishmentTo the contrary, he enjoyed tipping a glass now and then and was an incorrigible ham.

infuriatemake furious‘All you need to know is that it works,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to know how or why.’ Chris was just being Chris, but it infuriated me.

philanderera man who likes many womenOne of the individuals he professed to admire greatly over the last two years of his life was a heavy drinker and incorrigible philanderer who regularly beat up his girlfriends.

sanctimoniousexcessively or hypocritically piousWhenever Walt McCandless, in his stern fashion, would dispense a fatherly admonishment to Chris, Carine, or their half siblings, Chris would fixate on his father’s own less than sterling behavior many years earlier and silently denounce him as a sanctimonious hypocrite.

obliquelyto, toward or at one sideHe chose instead to make a secret of his dark knowledge and express his rage obliquely, in silence and sullen withdrawal.

anomalousdeviating from the general or common order or typeChris’s seemingly anomalous political positions were perhaps best summed up by Thoreau’s declaration in “Civil Disobedience": "I heartily accept the motto—‘That government is best which governs least.’ ”

lambastecensure severely or angrilyHe lampooned Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden, called for the resignation of Attorney General Edwin Meese, lambasted Bible-thumpers of the Christian right, urged vigilance against the Soviet threat, castigated the Japanese for hunting whales, and defended Jesse Jackson as a viable presidential candidate.

pellucidtransmitting light; able to be seen through with clarityIt was an abbreviated trip—he spent a short time around Fairbanks, then hurried south to get back to Atlanta in time for the start of fall classes—but he had been smitten by the vastness of the land, by the ghostly hue of the glaciers, by the pellucid subarctic sky.

recalcitrantstubbornly resistant to authority or controlIn both photos Chris stares at the lens with the same pensive, recalcitrant squint, as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of an important thought and was annoyed to be wasting his time in front of the camera.

crematereduce to ashesLess than twenty-four hours after landing in Fairbanks, Carine and Sam flew on to Anchorage, where Chris’s body had been cremated following the autopsy at the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory.

preeminentgreatest in importance or degree or significanceMy reasoning, if one can call it that, was inflamed by the scattershot passions of youth and a literary diet overly rich in the works of Nietzsche, Kerouac, and John Menlove Edwards, the latter a deeply troubled writer and psychiatrist who, before putting an end to his life with a cyanide capsule in 1958, had been one of the preeminent British rock climbers of the day.

inveigleinfluence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flatteringSo I drove as far as Gig Harbor, Washington, abandoned the car, and inveigled a ride on a northbound salmon seiner.

carapacehard outer covering or case of certain organismsVast and labyrinthine, the ice cap rides the spine of the Boundary Ranges like a carapace, from which the long blue tongues of numerous glaciers inch down toward the sea under the weight of the ages.

inebriatedstupefied or excited by a chemical substanceTo a self-possessed young man inebriated with the unfolding drama of his own life, all of this held enormous appeal.

phantasmagoriaa constantly changing medley of real or imagined imagesHere the glacier spills abruptly over the edge of a high plateau, dropping seaward through a gap between two mountains in a phantasmagoria of shattered ice.

madrigalan unaccompanied partsong for 2 or 3 voicesA madrigal of creaks and sharp reports—the sort of protest a large fir limb makes when it’s slowly bent to the breaking point—served as a reminder that it is the nature of glaciers to move

chutzpahunbelievable gall; insolence; audacityIn solo climbing the whole enterprise is held together with little more than chutzpah, not the most reliable adhesive.

hectorbe bossy towardsFrom elementary school through high school, my siblings and I were hectored to excel in every class, to win medals in science fairs, to be chosen princess of the prom, to win election to student government.

addlemix up or confuseTo a greater and greater degree his life revolved around a self-administered pharmacopoeia of steroids, amphetamines, mood elevators, and painkillers, and the drugs addled his once-formidable mind.

euphoriaa feeling of great elationThe euphoria, the overwhelming sense of relief, that had initially accompanied my return to Petersburg faded, and an unexpected melancholy took its place.

factitiousnot produced by natural forcesI wished to acquire the simplicity, native feelings, and virtues of savage life; to divest myself of the factitious habits, prejudices and imperfections of civilization; ... and to find, amidst the solitude and grandeur of the western wilds, more correct views of human nature and of the true interests of man.

escarpmenta long steep slope at the edge of a plateau or ridgeJust sixteen miles to the south, beyond an escarpment of the Outer Range, hundreds of tourists rumble daily into Denali Park over a road patrolled by the National Park Service.

rictusa gaping grimaceOverjoyed, the proud hunter took a photograph of himself kneeling over his trophy, rifle thrust triumphantly over-head, his features distorted in a rictus of ecstasy and amazement, like some unemployed janitor who'd gone to Reno and won a million-dollar jackpot.

ambivalentuncertain or unable to decide about what course to followAlthough McCandless was enough of a realist to know that hunting game was an unavoidable component of living off the land, he had always been ambivalent about killing animals.

naivetelack of sophistication or worldlinessBut McCandless, in his naivete, relied on the advice of hunters he’d consulted in South Dakota, who advised him to smoke his meat, not an easy task under the circumstances.

adamantlyinflexibly; unshakablyHe seemed to have moved beyond his need to assert so adamantly his autonomy, his need to separate himself from his parents.

idiosyncraticpeculiar to the individualBut Chris, with his idiosyncratic logic, came up with an elegant solution to this dilemma: He simply got rid of the map.

miasmaunhealthy vapors rising from the ground or other sourcesThe beaver ponds are never more than chest deep, but the water is cold, and as we slosh forward, our feet churn the muck on the bottom into a foul-smelling miasma of decomposing slime.

unequivocallyin an unambiguous mannerWhen I’d questioned Gordon Samel and Ken Thompson shortly after they’d discovered McCandless’s body, both men insisted—adamantly and unequivocally—that the big skeleton was the remains of a caribou, and they derided the greenhorn’s ignorance in mistaking the animal he killed for a moose.

hauteuroverbearing pride with a superior manner toward inferiorsSome critics have even drawn parallels between McCandless and the Arctic’s most infamous tragic figure, Sir John Franklin, a nineteenth-century British naval officer whose smugness and hauteur contributed to some 140 deaths, including his own.

sobriqueta familiar name for a personHe had been woefully unprepared to lead an Arctic expedition, and upon returning to England, he was known as the Man Who Ate His Shoes—yet the sobriquet was uttered more often with awe than with ridicule.

resilienceability of a material to return to its original shapeHe was green, and he overestimated his resilience, but he was sufficiently skilled to last for sixteen weeks on little more than his wits and ten pounds of rice.

disquietudefeelings of anxiety that make you tense and irritableThe disquietude he felt on Katahdin’s granite heights inspired some of his most powerful writing and profoundly colored the way he thought thereafter about the earth in its coarse, undomesticated state.

ruminationa calm, lengthy, intent considerationThe entries in McCandless’s journal contain few abstractions about wilderness or, for that matter, few ruminations of any kind.

modicuma small or moderate or token amountIt would be easy to stereotype Christopher McCandless as another boy who felt too much, a loopy young man who read too many books and lacked even a modicum of common sense.

staturethe height of a standing personTrying to explain McCandless’s unorthodox behavior, some people have made much of the fact that like John Waterman, he was small in stature and may have suffered from a “short man's complex," a fundamental insecurity that drove him to prove his manhood by means of extreme physical challenges.

stymiehinder or prevent the progress or accomplishment ofAfter his attempt to depart the wilderness was stymied by the Teklanika’s high flow, McCandless arrived back at the bus on July 8.

fecundcapable of producing offspring or vegetationIt was the height of summer, the country was a fecund riot of plant and animal life, and his food supply was adequate.

vexingextremely annoying or displeasing“And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness. . . . And this was most vexing of all,” he noted, “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.”

sabbaticala leave usually taken every seventh yearIt is tempting to regard this latter notation as further evidence that McCandless’s long, lonely sabbatical had changed him in some significant way.

incapacitatedlacking in or deprived of strength or powerIn order for McCandless to have been incapacitated by potato seeds, he would have had to eat many, many pounds of them; and given the light weight of his pack when Gallien dropped him off, it is extremely unlikely that he carried more than a few grams of potato seeds, if he carried any at all.

emetica medicine that induces nausea and vomitingFortunately, it proved emetic; and her stomach having rejected all that she had swallowed, she was restored to health, though her recovery was for some time doubtful.

unambiguousadmitting of no doubt or misunderstandingGiven the alarming, unambiguous entry McCandless had scrawled in his journal on July 30, I found it hard to believe that the enormous quantity of seeds he’d eaten just prior to that date played no role in his death.

conundruma difficult problemOver a period of several years I doggedly sifted through the scientific literature, hoping to find a clue that would explain this conundrum.

gruelingcharacterized by effort to the point of exhaustionThe damage wasn’t discovered until late July, when a wildlife biologist named Paul Atkinson made the grueling ten-mile bush-whack over the Outer Range, from the road into Denali National Park to the Park Service shelter.

vandalismwillful and malicious destruction of the property of othersThis looked like somebody had gone at the cabins with a claw hammer and bashed everything in sight. From the size of the fireweed growing up through mattresses that had been tossed outside, it was clear that the vandalism had occurred many weeks earlier.

monikera familiar name for a personRecognizing the gravity of his predicament, he had abandoned the cocky moniker he’d been using for years, Alexander Supertramp, in favor of the name given to him at birth by his parents.

beatificmarked by utter benignityOne of his last acts was to take a picture of himself, standing near the bus under the high Alaska sky, one hand holding his final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell.

altimeteran instrument that measures the height above groundAs the altimeter needle brushes five thousand feet, we crest a mud-colored ridge, the earth drops away, and a breathtaking sweep of taiga fills the Plexiglas wind-screen.

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